The Art of Accommodation ― Literary Translation in Russia

This collection of essays is a seminal contribution to the establishment of translation theory within the field of Russian literature and culture. It brings together the work of established academics and younger scholars from the United Kingdom, Russia, the United States, Sweden and France in an area of academic study that has been largely neglected in the Anglophone world. The essays in the volume are linked by the conviction that the introduction of any new text into a host culture should always be considered in conjunction with adjustments to prevailing conventions within that culture. The case studies in the collection, which cover literary translation in Russia from the eighteenth century to the twentieth century, demonstrate how Russian culture has interpreted and accommodated translated texts, and how translators and publishers have used translation as a means of responding to the literary, social and political conditions of their times. In integrating research in the area of translated works more closely into the study of Russian literature and culture generally, this publication represents an important development in current research.

Leon Burnett is Reader in Literature at the University of Essex, where he is currently director of the Centre for Myth Studies. His research interests are mainly in comparative and Russian literature. A former member of the executive committee of the British Comparative Literature Association, he was the main editor of its journal, New Comparison, from 1992 to 2000. He is at present working on a study of literary and artistic representations of the sphinx in Russia and the West.
Emily Lygo is Lecturer in Russian at the University of Exeter. Her research interests are mainly in twentieth-century Russian poetry, translation in the USSR and Anglo-Soviet cultural relations. Her publications include Leningrad Poetry 1953-1975: The Thaw Generation (2010) and articles on Russian poetry and cultural history.